How Karmin's Amy Heidemann Found Her Signature Look—and Then Let It Go

In the mere three years we’ve known Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan of Karmin, a lot has changed for the rapping, pop-music-making duo. In that time, we’ve watched Karmin go from posting low-budget covers on YouTube (that were often, ahem, even more hummable than the original versions) to hitting the stage of Saturday Night Live. These days, the real-life engaged couple is headlining their own nationwide #PulsesTour after releasing the albums “Hello” and, most recently, “Pulses.” Through this whirlwind of a ride, the one thing that has stayed the same is Amy’s devotion to keeping things interesting when it comes to beauty. “Being a pop artist, you want to always evolve—your sound needs to match the visuals,” says Amy, the self-proclaimed lipstick queen who wasn’t allowed to even try makeup until she was 16 years old. She spoke to Lipstick about her rock-solid love of makeup and ever-evolving look.

“I grew up in a conservative Christian family in Nebraska, and I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup until I was 16. I also couldn’t wax my eyebrows until then, which, trust me, was bad. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait for the day to start experimenting with makeup and even had my eyelash curler picked out in advance. When I was finally allowed to wear makeup, I was all about the body glitter and blue eyeshadow. Hey, this was the early 2000s, after all. I swear, they just shouldn’t have let me in Claire’s. I would buy all of those body glitter gels and douse myself in them. To make matters worse, they all came with different fragrances. Looking back now, it was pretty disgusting.”

"Here I am with my cousins when I was nine. I styled our hair for Crazy Hair Day at summer camp in Wyoming."

“When I got to college in Boston, I dyed my hair for the first time. I dyed it dark, almost black—my hair is naturally in-between that blond/brown color—and I started to get a lot of attention for it. College was also the first time I had ever set foot in a Sephora. I remember being completely blown away by all the free samples.”

"I was a Best Hair winner for my class in high school."

“One day, I was walking around Newbury Street in Boston, which is one of the best shopping streets, and there was an ad up in a store window of a girl with a cinnamon-roll type of hairstyle, right in the middle of her forehead. I thought it looked like it could only work in high fashion, but maybe I could figure it out and make it my own. I spent a lot of time on YouTube looking up tutorials that showed how to style your hair in two of those cinnamon-roll type of styles, which was called ‘the victory roll,’ but I modified it to have just one hair roll—‘the suicide roll.’ It’s a back-combed pompadour, in the front of your head. It used to take me over an hour in the mirror to get it right, but now I have it down to five minutes.”

"14 years old and styling my hair for a dance. Those twists and spirals were my favorite thing to do—butterfly clips!"

“When I had my hair in the 'suicide roll' style, I felt my energy change. I felt more powerful. That was when I started rapping too. This was the very beginning of Karmin, so not many people knew who we were, but when I had my hair styled like that, people would stop us on the street and ask for a picture. I know it was because of the hair. Suddenly, all of these new things were happening, and I thought, This is going to be my trademark.”

“When Nick and I started doing our YouTube videos, I decided to go for a bold makeup look to accompany my retro-future style. I used to hate lipstick—it was always sticky and would make my hair go in my mouth when I was singing. But once I found this perfect (and cheap!) Revlon red, I noticed that my features popped so much more in our videos. That’s when I also started to fill my eyebrows. Sometimes I got a little crazy and made them too dark, but I loved how you can really define your face with those little additions.”

“My arms definitely got tired from doing the 'suicide roll' for a full year every day by myself, and I thought that with the new sound from our Pulses album, it was time for a different look. My hair guy Aaron Light (he’s worked with Jessica Alba and Katy Perry) chopped it all off and bleached the crap out of it. We had a seven-hour session! It’s high-maintenance, but I love it. I was nervous for such a big beauty change, and Nick was too (he hates when I wear dark lipstick and prefers a more natural Amy, which is really sweet), but the shorter length is a lot of fun. I don’t have to wash my hair every day anymore because the cuticle has changed, so it’s a lot drier. I really think that I’m going to go for a different hair color with each album. You take on a whole new identity! I think I’d have a lot of fun as a redhead ”

Check out the very blond Amy with Nick in their video for “Pulses” here: